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The guitar sound around us erupted as if to agree that the path I was on was the wrong one. Draven’s eyes closed as I heard it, and he let out a frustrated sigh.

“
Would you be able to protect me if I was in danger?” I asked timidly.

His eyes opened, and a painful anger filled his expression. “You have never once asked me to do that…you’re too stubborn.” His perfect lips tried to smile, but his sadness wouldn’t let them.

“
You didn’t answer my question.”

He nodded. “Without a doubt, we’re stronger together than we are apart…but you know something I don’t, and the only way to figure out what it is…is to let your memory come back on its own.”

“
What if it doesn’t?”

His eyes danced across my face, then settled in mine. “Then…I guess I have no choice but to… beg you to fall in love with me again….because I can’t live without you.”

“
Again,” I said as my breath left me.

In my mind, thousands of memories of he and I together echoed through my thoughts. Adrenaline was coursing through every part of me. I couldn’t put one thought in front of the other - I couldn’t hold on to one memory long enough to understand it. It was as if someone was showing me a life lived from a distance. I felt a thousand emotions. I knew what was between us was imperfectly beautiful. It was like I was grieving for him – like my heart was waking up and I realized how blind I really was – ‘again’ was the wrong word… I never could have stopped loving him.

He slowly reached his hand up, then cradled my face. Not waiting for him to pull me to him, I leaned into his kiss. He held me so tight, I thought I could barely breathe. Suddenly, the urge not to allow any distance between us came over me, and I pulled him closer to me, embracing every angelic move of his lips.

Draven lifted me into his lap, then laid me down on the couch. I could feel the strength in every part of his body. I could feel his anger, passion, and grief; for the time, I didn’t know who he was. I held him tighter, even though I could feel the power of his arms as his hands moved against my body; I wasn’t close enough. My skin blushed, my heart raced, and I found it hard to breathe – his touch, his kiss - it felt like life was coming back to me – power was coming into me. Not a supernatural power – just the power of knowing who you are… knowing that you are loved.

My mind was cruel to me. I knew I had broken his heart long before yesterday, and I hated myself for that. Angry tears came to the corners of my eyes. My thoughts were screaming at me – just remember! Remember it all! How could you forget him?! What did you do to him?!

The angry tears pooled from my eyes, then fell silently along my cheek; once they reached Draven, his lips moved from mine, then danced across my cheek and down my neck. He was trying to take it all away: my fear, my pain, my heartache…but it wasn’t my heart I was worried about. His arms tightened around me, then pulled me on top of him. I closed my eyes and laid on his chest. I felt his hand gently move across my back. He reached for my hand and placed it on his chest. “I feel you coming back to me,” he whispered.

We were both trembling with emotions that couldn’t be contained in words. I began to commit the beat of his heart to memory – I would never let anyone take his memory from me again.

A moment later, he began to hum a soft lullaby. I could remember the song…it was the first song he had written for me. I held his chest as tight as I could as I tried to grasp a memory long enough to make it mine again.

I felt his fingers glide through my hair. I closed my eyes in agony as an overwhelming desire to keep him safe came to me. I felt like I tried to do just that, but all I’d done was make things worse.

I drifted to sleep and let the echoes of a life I couldn’t recall rush through my mind. I wanted my memory back – all of it…I wanted us back.

The sound of his heartbeat chased me into my dreams; at first, I didn’t even know I was asleep. Then all of the sudden, I found myself standing under a starlight sky, swaying back and forth in Draven’s arms. I wasn’t afraid of the darkness - I couldn’t hear any whispers. All I could feel was gratitude for that moment – it was like we had been apart and I cherished that moment. I could feel a warm breeze blowing through my hair and smell the salt in the air. I looked up at him to find him smiling adoringly down at me.

“
You don’t have to say it back,” he whispered. “I know we’ve never said it before – but I needed you to know how I feel.”

In my dream, my eyes questioned him.

“
I’ve always loved you, Charlie – even before I knew what the word meant.”

A smile spread across my face. Just as I began to say the words back to him, a crash of thunder woke me from my blissful dream. I sat up, trying to catch my breath. Draven must have fallen asleep, too; he looked startled by the loud noise.

“
Maybe we need to go to a room that doesn’t have so many windows,” he said, stretching his arms out.

I pulled myself up and tried to hold the emotion I felt in that dream – to understand it. I looked out the window just as lightning spider-webbed across the sky. As Draven walked closer to the window to look at his house, I saw him grin and shake his head. I stood and took one step forward, then I could see what he was laughing at: Aden was sound asleep on the floor next to the couch.

“
That looks like it’s gonna hurt when he wakes up,” I said in a concerned tone.

Draven laughed under his breath as he pulled out his phone and sent out a text. I watched as Aden jumped in his sleep – he read what Draven had sent, then nodded and pulled himself up and left the room.

“
He’s not coming to get you, is he? It still looks bad,” I said in a pleading tone – I didn’t want him to go - not yet.

Draven walked slowly to my side, put his arm around me, and guided me to the stairs. “It’s almost four. I just told him to go to his room and come get me at daylight - this should pass by then.”

I let out a sigh of relief – daylight was always safer – less shadows. When we reached my room, I slid out of my boots, then his hoodie. I folded the hoodie neatly and laid it across the short wall. Draven sat on the edge of my bed and scrolled through his phone. “Whatever this is will clear out in just a little bit – they just said to stay away from windows; I don’t think we need to wake Kara up,” he said, looking up at me.

I didn’t say anything; I just stared at his perfect image as I replayed the dream I had – I didn’t know if it was something that really happened or just something I wished had happened. I walked to the edge of my bed and sat next to him.

“
Have we ever been to the beach together?” I asked, looking up at him.

A smile came to the corners of his lips. “Did you dream?”

I nodded as the sound of the guitar rejoiced around us.

“
We’ve been to several ,” he said, staring intently into my eyes.

“
Who said ‘I love you’ first?” I asked, holding his stare.

“
Well…I’m sure we said it a lot when we were really little…but…when I was seventeen….you were almost sixteen….I finally told you how I felt.”

“
On a beach, under the stars,” I whispered.

A grin spread across his perfect image. “That’s right,” he said, leaning forward to steal a kiss. I wanted to kiss him back, but I was too curious and I pulled away quickly.

“
Why did it feel like we had been apart? I cherished every second like it would be our last.”

He looked down, and anger took over his expression. “We…we seemed to be fighting the same battles as our parents did.”

“
My dad? Your mom?”

He nodded.

“
Did it kill them?” I asked as my voice trembled.

I heard the guitar echo a solemn tone, and tears came to the corners of my eyes.

Draven moved closer to me and wrapped his arm around me, pulling me to him. “My mom died giving birth to me…no one could ever prove that your father’s death was anything more than an accident – but you and I…we’ve seen enough to believe otherwise.”

“
Did something drive us apart? Why are we not always together?”

He hesitated and pulled slightly away. “The things that we could see – what we could hear…we kept to ourselves until around middle school – at that point, my dad figured it out.”

“
How?” I asked, turning to face him – my heart was racing – inside, I was furious that the whispers could have very well taken my dad from me –I felt cheated and hurt.

“
Charlie…I don’t wanna do this…I want you to find your memory on your own – I know something happened - that you know something – I can’t help you remember that …and it has to be important.”

“
Draven, listen to me – answer my questions. I’ve already proven that I can remember us – help me fill in the rest, and I’ll find a way to remember what you think I know.” My tone was demanding and desperate at the same time.

He pulled himself back on my bed and leaned against my headboard. I crawled closer and stared at him. He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were. “You’re starting to sound like my Charlie,” he said quietly.

“
What happened in middle school?” I asked again.

He looked down and reached for my hand and let his fingertips run across mine. “One day on the field at school, Aden and I were playing football with the team. All of a sudden, the shadowed images came from everywhere. They were moving in and out of our friends – we attacked them – it led to a fight on the field – the coaches tore us apart, and my dad was called – he was furious – we’d never been in trouble before, our grades were flawless – when we got home that day, he demanded that we tell him what had gotten into us – when we refused, he told us we were grounded – that we couldn’t see our friends anymore until we explained ourselves – Aden and I couldn’t let that happen – we knew you and Madison could see what we could – that if they came after us, they could come after you. The only way we could protect you was by confessing the things that we could see and hear.”

“
Madison acted like we all see differently.”

He nodded. “In a way – we may see the problem in different ways, but we all see the same answer. She and Aden are different from you and me. The shadows don’t call them by name – we’ve never understood why. “

“
What did your dad say? Did he tell my mom – does she know?”

He reached his fingertips to my lips to stop my endless questions. “Shh…take what I’m saying in slowly…if you can’t remember any of it, let it go and hold on to what you do remember – your perception and mine are gonna be different, and yours is the one that’s the most important right now.”

I let my lips kiss his fingertips as if to agree. A smile beamed across his face as he let his hand fall into mine.

“
Instead of my dad thinking we were insane, like we thought he would – he believed us – he believed us because my mom and your dad had told him the same thing before. “

“
How does Madison fit into this? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“
She’s my distant cousin – our grandmothers are sisters – same blood – that’s the only connection we’ve really found.”

“
You said we were stronger together – why did they separate us?”

“
At that time, they thought that Aden and I were attracting it – some kind of target – my dad thought separating us would keep you and Madison safe – we moved to the UK the next week.”

A horrible memory jolted through my mind as chills spread across my spine – I - I remember crying breathless into my pillow, clinching a photo of Draven when he was just a boy….I remember feeling like my body was being torn apart – like I’d lost part of my soul. “They were wrong…” I whispered.

“
Yeah…the whispers were constant around you….you had insane nightmares of shadows taking over everyone around you. My dad had found old friends in the UK – people who understood what we were going through – he wanted us to stay there – he asked your mom to move there….but she couldn’t find the strength to move…it took everything she had to move to NY.”

“
Why there?”

“
She wanted you close to her, and she had to work…over the past few years, all of our parents have just been trying to figure out who the real attraction – trigger is – and why. You and I didn’t really care – we wanted to be together, and the summers – holidays and random weekends weren’t enough. We started looking for an escape – started counting down to the day when we could just run away together.”

“
I was counting down the days…,” I said as my eyes raced back and forth.

He nodded to agree. “Madison and Aden are determined to go with us – they think they can protect us.”

All of a sudden, I remembered when they said that – it was last Christmas Break, and we were here – Austin was here; I couldn’t remember the words he said, but I knew he was our escape.

“
Austin – he’s our way out.”

Draven looked down. “We used to think that.”

“
What do you mean?”

Draven hesitated before he answered. “When Austin told us about where he lived – it was like someone had told us that we’d been cured from some terminal disease – he warned us that there was a myth that if you weren’t brought to that place by someone who you loved – that the world would reject you on a physical level. He didn’t know how much truth was behind that myth – he told us that Landen could see the truth - that either he or someone in his family would know if it was safe for us to go there, and if it wasn’t, Landen would be able to help us find a place that was safe – free from negative intent.”